A Lovely Way to Burn

by Louise Welsh

  ‘I don’t any more. I found him dead in his bed on Wednesday.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Rachel’s voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘I had a cousin who accidentally took an overdose at a party. My sister and I found her the following morning. It was horrible.’

  ‘It wasn’t drugs. He was a doctor.’

  ‘Either way it’s a tragedy.’

  Rachel’s tone suggested that doctors were far from being above suspicion.

  ‘He didn’t do drugs.’ Stevie wasn’t sure why she was so anxious to labour the point. ‘The police think it was something called sudden adult death syndrome. You go to sleep and never wake up.’

  Rachel sighed. ‘I was about to send someone round to check on you.’

  ‘To check on me?’

  ‘You live on your own, you phoned in sick and then we heard nothing, complete radio silence. I got young Precious to phone, but you didn’t pick up. I was worried.’

  ‘I’m touched.’ Stevie silently cursed Joanie. She was probably off on one of the short-lived romantic adventures that had become a feature of her life since her Derek’s defection.

  ‘I’m genuinely sorry to hear about your boyfriend, Stevie,’ Rachel continued. ‘Believe me I wouldn’t do this if I had any choice, but you’re on shift tonight.’

  Stevie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had calculated the consequences of walking out on her job so many times that the urge to tell Shop TV to shove it automatically conjured the aura of unpaid bills and lawyers’ letters. But proximity to death had made her reckless. She opened her eyes.

  ‘Rachel, Simon died. I found him. I don’t think I can go on live television and pretend to be wet about whatever crap it is we’re punting tonight. Cut me bit of slack, just this once, please.’

  ‘I would love to, believe me I sympathise. I’ll never forget finding my cousin Charlotte, it took me years to get over it. I’m not sure my sister ever recovered, but we’re three presenters down, including Joanie who’s in hospital.’

  The guilt that had sat on Stevie since she had discovered Simon screwed itself tighter in her stomach.

  ‘What’s wrong with Joanie?’

  ‘The same thing that’s wrong with the rest of them, only more so, sickness, vomiting, diarrhoea, high fever, hot and cold sweats. Don’t you watch the news?’

  ‘I told you, I was sick. I thought it was the shock of finding Simon.’

  ‘The great washed and unwashed of London are going down with the lurgy, as are a good portion of Paris, New York and anywhere else you care to mention. People have died. That’s why I was going to send someone round to check on you. I was worried you might have shuffled off this mortal coil.’

  For the first time Stevie thought she could detect a note of panic beneath Rachel’s posh bonhomie. She walked to the window. The parade of shops in the street below looked as busy as ever. Rachel had a reputation for exaggerating, but she wouldn’t lie about Joanie being in hospital.

  ‘Do you think that might have been what got your boy?’ the producer asked.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Rachel that Simon hadn’t been her boy, not really, but Stevie merely said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘If you can get here for seven, I’ll get Precious to go over the briefings with you, and you can go on at eight.’

  ‘I look like shit.’

  ‘We’ll all look like shit by then. I’m covering for Brian, and then doing my own gig tonight. Put your trust in make-up, darling. You’ll look a million dollars by the time you go on.’ Now that everything had been settled, the producer was back to her usual brisk self. ‘I’ll email you the product line-up so you’re not entirely in the dark when you arrive. We’ve got some top-notch stuff.’

  Rachel always described their merchandise as ‘top-notch stuff’. Joanie, whose father and grandfather had worked the markets, called it swag.

  Stevie asked, ‘Which hospital is Joanie in?’

  ‘I’m not sure, hang on.’ Rachel had a muffled exchange with someone and then came back on the line. ‘St Thomas’s. She’s in intensive care, but I’d keep away if I were you. This thing seems to be catching and we can’t afford to lose another presenter.’

  ‘You forget I’ve already had it.’

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re immune. My cousin Charlotte thought she was immune. Look where it got her.’

  Nine

  Rachel had spoken as if London was in meltdown, but the Jubilee line showed no sign of crisis. The carriage was full and Stevie was forced to stand, her body just one of many sardined together, hurtling through the depths. Perhaps the trains were brightly lit to take people’s minds off how dark the tunnels outside really were. The Underground carriage’s fluorescence drained the passengers’ complexions of any lustre. The dark skin of the business-suited man beside her had turned grey, and the woman leaning against the pole by the door had taken on a jaded sheen that reminded Stevie of the print of Tretchikoff’s green lady that had hung in her grandmother’s hallway.

  Stevie felt the weight of the city above her and wondered how deep beneath the ground she was. West Hampstead … Finchley Road … Swiss Cottage … St John’s Wood … The automated announcer declared the stations in her machine-plummy voice, not bothering to warn them to mind the gap. Londoners didn’t dwell on the people who had died on the Underground: the navvies sacrificed to its construction, the suicides and careless drunks crushed against the tracks, the terrorist bombings, Jean Charles de Menezes murdered by police marksmen. They walked past the memorial to those who had died in the King’s Cross fire without a glance, because to remember too often would be crippling. Londoners were the blood of the city and the city went on, regardless of the Black Death, the Great Fire, the Blitz, and terrorist bombings. It was only occasionally, when the train stopped between stations, that passengers caught each other’s eye and wondered if their luck had run out.

  Simon’s laptop was in a satchel slung across Stevie’s body. The weight of it pulled at her shoulder blade. The carriage shuddered to a halt and an elderly man’s hand grazed her right breast. He gave her a half smile that might have been an apology or an invitation. Stevie’s foot tensed with the urge to stamp on his toes but she merely shifted her bag to her other side, making a barrier between them.

  Stevie thought she could scent the lingering smell of her illness beneath the blend of body odours and rubber that permeated the carriage. A droplet of sweat slid down her spine and she hoped her shirt wouldn’t cling to it. She noticed an ex-member of the Cabinet further down the train. Cartoonists had made a feature of his hair, which was usually gelled in a blond quiff, but it had lost its bounce and was slumped greasily against his forehead. Stevie wondered how he dared to use public transport in the wake of failing wars, austerity and job cuts, and then she spotted the trio shadowing him, men whose sharp suits needed no padding to broaden their shoulders. They looked tired, as if a life of being on the alert had taken its toll.

  The Underground train dashed to a halt and the robot voice announced: Westminster. Stevie squeezed from the carriage, joining the stream of bodies making their way along the platform and into the corridors that led to the escalators. The station was a hundred or so years old, but the original interior had vanished beneath a monumental steel-and-concrete façade designed to remind travellers that this was a feat of engineering, a miracle to rival flesh and blood.

  Stevie stepped on to one of the upward-bound escalators, aware of other bodies being ferried upwards and downwards in the vast hallway. The whoosh and rattle of the trains was still audible beyond the hum of the escalators, but otherwise the station was surprisingly quiet, as if this was a place where machines held sway and men and women held their tongues.

  She imagined the noise that would fill the station if all of their thoughts became words, the racket of it. The idea felt like a hangover from her fever. Stevie gripped the moving bannister and looked up towards the exit. The angle of the stairwell was dizzying.


  Then, suddenly, the hum of the machine world was fractured by shouting. Stevie looked across the rows of escalators and saw a man tumbling down the metal steps, limp-limbed and flailing. Somewhere, someone must have hit the emergency button because the staircase stalled. People reached towards him, trying to stop his progress, but the man’s body had gathered momentum. He crashed into a woman on the stairs below; she fell too, and then it seemed that a shoal of people were falling.

  A couple of youths managed to leap on to the bannisters, but gravity was faster than even gym-fit commuters and other people were caught in the descent. Stevie had watched countless movie villains tumble to their deaths, but cinema hadn’t prepared her for the chaos of it, or the sound of bone on metal that seemed to rise above the shouting. Her escalator juddered to a halt and she stood, frozen, unsure of what to do. The screaming died into sobs and agitated chatter, and she heard a train rush into the station. Down below, people were gathering. Someone was crying. Someone else shouted for a doctor. And then slowly, unbelievably, the queue of people on the stairway ahead of Stevie started to move, and she moved with them, climbing out of the Underground towards the light.

  She overheard a passing teenager, who might have been Italian, say, ‘He was swaying and then he fell. I saw him. It was too quick to do anything. What could I do? I was on the other staircase.’

  A cockney voice answered, ‘Nah, mate, he was pushed. I saw it with my own eyes. A white man pushed him down the steps.’

  ‘He’s got the sickness,’ said an elderly lady. ‘That’s how it hits you. One moment you’re okay, the next you’re dead.’

  ‘It was gravity got him,’ the cockney youth said. ‘It never lets up for a moment.’

  Then they were outside, embraced by the ever-present rumble of traffic and the stale city air that not even the river could freshen. For an instant the commuters, newly released from the world below, were distinct from the pedestrians aboveground, as if their mortality had risen to the surface with them and left its mark. Then they dispersed, and were absorbed into London’s careless anonymity, taking the memory of the falling man with them.

  Stevie wove her way between the tourists who crammed the streets around Westminster, viewing the sites through the lenses of their cameras. The satchel containing the laptop banged against her thigh. An ambulance was trying to force its way through the traffic towards the Underground station, its sirens screaming. It was agonising, the sound of the sirens, its thwarted progress. She looked away, at the Thames and the looming Houses of Parliament. They seemed unreal, like a backdrop rolled out for a budget movie that needed a quick establishing shot. This was what tourists imagined when they thought of the city: Big Ben and red buses, the London Eye and bobbies with silly helmets. And it was all there waiting for them.

  But did they see the rest? Stevie wondered. The rough sleepers and kettled demos, the cheap chicken fryers whose sleeping bags lay bundled in the back of the shop, the men and women hanging around King’s Cross with a kind word and the offer of a bed for the night to runaways they would soon put to work?

  Maybe the tourists did see, and felt as helpless as she did. It was a globalised world after all, and there was no reason to imagine that their capital cities were any different. The screams of the people falling were still in her mind. Stevie felt a sudden urge to go back, but didn’t break her stride as she crossed Westminster Bridge. Simon had trusted her to deliver the laptop. It was the only service she could do for him now.

  Ten

  St Thomas’s Hospital was grey and dirty against the blue sky. The filth of the city clung to its once white façade as if drawn there by the sickness within. Stevie felt a familiar sense of dread, but she walked through the automatic doors and into the foyer.

  Inside, St Thomas’s looked more like a small mall than a hospital. A queue ran all the way from the tills in the Marks & Spencer’s concession to the bunches of two-for-five-pounds roses and serviceable carnations stationed in buckets at its door. The entrance hall was busy with workers on their lunch breaks but Stevie caught glimpses of the building’s real purpose amongst the crowd.

  A thin man with a stethoscope draped around his neck stood by the lifts, talking on his mobile phone. Two women in green scrubs chatted as they walked towards the exit. A policeman shook his head and laughed at something an ambulance driver had just told him. Stevie thought she could spot some relatives of patients too. Tired-looking low-wattage ghosts of themselves, hoarding their energy for those moments when they needed to dredge up a healing smile or their heart’s blood.

  Stevie went to the reception desk and explained that she was looking for Mr Reah. ‘I think he’ll be in one of the children’s wards.’

  The receptionist consulted her computer. Stevie stared at a poster on the wall behind the desk.

  COUGHING

  VOMITING

  DIARRHOEA

  RASH

  SWOLLEN GLANDS

  If you experience a combination of three

  or more of these symptoms, avoid sharing

  them with your friends and family.

  OBSERVE GOOD HYGIENE

  CATCH COUGHS IN A DISPOSABLE TISSUE

  DO NOT PREPARE FOOD FOR OTHERS

  WASH YOUR HANDS FREQUENTLY

  STAY AT HOME

  CALL 0800 669 9961

  The receptionist looked up at her.

  ‘You’re in the wrong building. You want the private part of the hospital.’

  Stevie thought she sensed disapproval in the other woman’s voice, but perhaps she was just hearing an echo of her own surprise. Simon had never mentioned that he did private work. Stevie had imagined him tending sick children regardless of their parents’ means. She covered her disappointment with a smile and asked if it would be possible to visit Joan Caniparoli.

  ‘I was told she was in intensive care.’ Stevie’s voice was salesgirl-bright. ‘But I think there’s a good chance she’ll be out of there by now.’

  The receptionist asked her to spell Joanie’s second name and rattled it into the computer keyboard.

  Her eyes met Stevie’s. ‘Are you a relative?’

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘I’m afraid Mrs Caniparoli is still in intensive care.’ This time there was sympathy in the woman’s voice. ‘That means only close relatives are allowed to visit.’

  Stevie wanted to tell the woman that she saw more of Joanie than any of her relatives did, but the reception telephone buzzed. The receptionist answered it and returned her attention to her computer screen, looking for whatever the person on the other end of the line needed to know.

  Stevie followed the directions to the private wing. There was a flutter of apprehension in her stomach, a quickening of the feeling she still got just before the studio clock hit the hour and they went on air. She glanced at her mobile phone and then switched it off. It was 2.45 p.m. so she should be in good time for the end of Mr Reah’s rounds. Stevie straightened her back, trying to assume the air of someone who had a right to prowl hospital corridors. If anyone asked her what she was up to, she would tell them the truth. She was delivering a laptop from the recently deceased Dr Simon Sharkey to Mr Reah. What could be more reasonable? After that she would go to intensive care and tell whatever lies she needed to, the same way Joanie would if Stevie was lying alone in a hospital bed.

  She shifted her bag, transferring the weight of the computer to her other shoulder, and wondered how Joanie would look. The thought conjured a memory of Julia Sharkey’s gaunt cheekbones, the wry smile in the skull face.

  ‘We doctors have a way with death.’

  Stevie hoped, for Joanie’s sake, that they had a way with life too.

  Eleven

  Stevie washed her hands with the antibacterial gel from the dispenser in the corridor and pulled at the door to the children’s ward. It refused to open. She tried pushing and then pulled again, but it stood firm against her.

  ‘What did you expect me to do, Simon?’ she muttered beneat
h her breath. ‘Use a battering ram?’

  There was a security pad on the wall, similar to the one she swiped her identity card on at the television station. She thought again of Simon’s letter, his appeal to her ingenuity. But she was powerless against locks and electronic alarms.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind her. Stevie could tell it was a man by the confident length of his stride and the flat sound his shoes made against the floor. She took a step backwards, fished out the small handbag she had slipped into her satchel with the laptop and started rummaging in it. When the stranger was almost upon her, she tipped the bag’s contents, a jumble of receipts, pens, card wallet, purse and cosmetics, on to the floor.

  ‘Damn.’ The case of an Yves Saint Laurent lipstick had cracked when it hit the ground, and her curse wasn’t entirely an act. Stevie crouched and started gathering up the muddle of stuff. ‘I’m sorry.’ She had hoped the newcomer might bend and help her pick up the spilled contents, but she could feel him standing behind her. Stevie glanced up and saw a tall, broad-shouldered man in a white coat staring down at her. His brown eyes were shielded by glasses, but his stiff posture was as impatient as a clicking finger.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She got to her feet, apologising again. ‘You’re in a hurry.’ Stevie read the name card pinned to his lapel as she stood up: Dr Ahumibe. The doctor’s expression was stern, but his eyes did a quick flit, down, then up her body. Stevie smiled, forcing herself not to show too many teeth. Face-to-face selling required more subtlety than the brash, late-night TV pitches she was used to giving. ‘Can you tell me where to find Mr Reah, please? I was meant to meet him after his rounds, but I seem to have lost my bearings.’

  Dr Ahumibe closed his eyes for a second. His expression was tight, like that of a man who knew he was reaching the end of his tether, but was determined to stay in control.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Stevie said again. ‘It’s a big hospital, easy to get lost.’

  The doctor opened his eyes. He swiped the door and ushered her into the ward.

  ‘Are you a close colleague of Mr Reah?’ His voice was deep and upper class, touched with a hint of an accent she couldn’t quite identify.